Taking a look at Guilds of Ravnica.

Howdy everyone! Guilds of Ravnica is nearing on our doorsteps and like always, I will go over the most interesting cards from the set regarding Storm. This set looks really exciting, not only do we get some really good cards but good old Shock lands make their return for the third time. Let’s dig in!

Without a doubt, the most hyped card from this set, and for a good reason too! I still remember how insane Vindicate used to be, and this is just better card as long as you can support the colours. I’m fairly sure that the card will see loads of play, not only in Standard, but Modern and Legacy for sure. BGx decks have always struggled with big planeswalkers like Teferi and Jace from UWx control, or Karn Liberated and Ugin, The Spirit Dragon from Tron. Abrupt Decay won’t hit any of the above cards while Assassin’s Trophy will deal with all of them. Now you still are giving them a land and they get to use the planeswalkers before you have a chance to use this card but it will at least give you a fighting chance. Also this will even the odds against Tron by a _lot_ since blowing up those precious Tron lands before the Urzatron is complete, will hamper their game plan pretty significantly. So I’m expecting BGx decks to have a uprise for these reasons. This might also make people run bit more basic lands so any Blood Moon strategies will not be as good perhaps, but we will see how things shake up.

Ral has returned for another go, still wearing our nice Izzet colours. Now I kinda like this fella, helps us dig for stuff while also dumping stuff for graveyard, can kill pretty big creatures and the ultimate will finnish the game pretty quickly. I’ve seen Chandra, Torch Of Defiance in Storm and she is also very viable, creates a sub-game so do speaking and forces our opponent to deal with her. Ral has a similar effect but 5 mana is a lot in Modern. If you can land him and get to untap then Ral feels pretty insane. My first instinct says that 5 mana is simply too much, and we can’t really protect planeswalkers so I would say it won’t make the cut but I want to be proven wrong!

While drawing cards and copying spells is mighty fine, this little mage will die to pretty much any removal and requires loads of mana to make use of her. Sorry honey, Goblin Electromancer takes the slot here.

Provides us the ability to copy basically any spell in our deck or as a very expensive removal. Now if you want to copy your spells, Pyromancer Ascension is the go card here. Explosion is just way too expensive manavise and drawing those cards aren’t really worth the mana you have to invest here. Fiery Impulse and Flame Slash are decent options if you need more removals against Humans for example.

Interesting card, it’s fairly cheap and we can pile in the charge counters pretty easily. Good thing it doesn’t care about graveyard-hate also. However it requires a lot of investment to draw cards or even more to deal that 5 damage. I’m not really feeling it with this card, feels too slow and ineffective unfortunately.

Could be anti-control card since it can’t be countered, is a decent clock and we can utilize all of the abilities. Now it can still be Path To Exiled but control doesn’t really keep Paths in after sideboard. But I can’t get over the hefty 6 mana cost, that alone makes me pass on this card.

Nice little card to avoid graveyard hate or even Leyline Of Sancity since this doesn’t target. But doing 1 damage is not enough and this will eat removal very fast. Not quite enough but cool.

I know I saved the best for last, this card definitely got my interest the day I saw it. It’s actually pretty insane effect, ignores any graveyard hate or Leyline Of Sanctity, and things will get out of control pretty fast with this card. Casting 7 Manamorphoses? Oh yes please count me in! Now to get back in track..I see some issues here, the main which is that dreaded cmc of 6. I could see this card against control/grindier decks like Jund/Mardu, those decks can’t really remove this card (barring Maelstrom Pulse). Now against control we are never, ever going to resolve this so that plan is pretty much out the window unfortunately. And this is one of those “win-more” type of cards, yes it does powerful things, but honestly, do we need to go that overkill? Probably not. We already have a strong deck, and Empty The Warrens+Pieces Of The Puzzle to present multiple threats. I’m really 50/50 with this card, will have to test and see how it handles!

So that’s it for my personal picks, feel like I missed something? Anything you would add? Hit me with suggestions in the comment section!